How She Manages Family Photos

My third son, Abel, was in preschool. I also had a second grader and a kindergartner and a one-year-old at home. It was a busy time of life.

His preschool teacher had this cute idea that all the kids would bring in baby pictures for a project. She gave us a week’s notice. I remembered the night before. I frantically searched for a baby picture of him and realized I had never printed a single picture of him in the three years he’d been alive. I had nothing.

I did, however, find a printed picture of my second son. Sooo, I pulled it out, showed it to Abel and told him, “you were such a cute baby.” Which wasn’t a lie—he was a cute baby. I never actually said that the picture wasn’t of him… and I sent him to school with his brother’s baby picture. He totally bought it. Preschoolers. 

I don’t think I’m the only one whose photos and videos are locked in digital form. In fact, when I asked about taking pictures on the How She Moms Facebook group, I could literally feel moms ramping up the guilt. The responses were full of “shoulds.” I should print more of my photos. I should hang more family photos. I should make some photo books. I should clean out my photo roll. But here’s the thing. The season where you capture the cutest childhood memories is usually the season that you have the least amount of time to organize those photos.

The purpose of this episode is not to make you feel guilty for all the things you should be doing with your family photos, or overwhelmed by all the work you’ll have to do to get on top of it. The goal today is to help you create a system for managing your photos that works for you, in your current stage of life. We’ll give you some tools and show you how five different moms manage their photos, but also give you permission to do the bare minimum now, to protect and organize your photos so they’ll be there when you get around to doing something with them.

Then the next episode will be about how moms use these photos and videos to tell their family’s story—some of the creative ways people display pictures and make them more accessible.

Before we get much deeper into the episode, I want to introduce you to Casey von Stein, aka Miss Freddy, who will be our main expert in this episode. Miss Freddy got her nickname because she looked like Fred Flintstone as a baby, and it stuck. We’ll keep calling her by her nickname in this episode, because it will help you remember how to find her online at missfreddy.com and on Instagram @missfreddy. She started her family photo career as a photographer for 10 years, but she found that what her clients and blog readers wanted even more than her beautiful photos was a way to organize their photos

We want to document every moment because the kids keep growing. If you don’t have a system in place, you can’t access the photos and videos enough to enjoy them. It’s too hard to do when you’re feeling overwhelmed by the size of the camera roll on your phone.

So Miss Freddy made a big pivot and started a business as a photo organizer. She or another member of her team will actually organize your photos and videos for you, but she also teaches courses on how to organize your own photos, how to back them up, how to take pictures of your kids, you name it. She even gave us a special deal for How She Moms listeners. You can get 20% off her online courses and digital guides if you use the code howshemoms when you check out.

Today she’s going to give us a glimpse into her tried and true system, which she uses with her own family, and we’ll also hear from a few other moms about their systems. 

Why Organize Family Photos?

Whenever I do an episode about creating your own systems, I like to start by talking strategy, then move to tactics and logistics. It might seem obvious why we take and save photos. But let’s break it down into several different objectives.  

1. To help us remember.

Lubna Jamal, a photographer and mother of two teenage boys, says,

I tend to forget a lot of things if I don’t have it captured in photographs. Seeing the photos and writing about them evokes memories that are important not to lose. 

And here’s Miss Freddy with her thoughts about remembering:

 My kids are eight and seven. I have totally forgotten what those everyday moments were like when my daughter was in the carrying car seat. I love looking back because everything  changes so fast. 

 2. To help our kids remember.

I asked my sister, Cassie Gadd, why she thinks it’s important to capture memories in photos.

 If you think of an entire lifetime, and how small a portion of it is childhood, it’s really great to be able to look back on their childhood in pictures. One picture can instantly bring back the memory. My kids will always remember when Naomi, at age 4, bit into a raw onion. The video is legendary. After wiping her tongue off on her shirt, she says, “It’s kind of souring my brain.” 

One of the most sacred roles of mothers is to be a witness for our kids’ lives, especially the early parts that they won’t possibly remember. Taking pictures is a way to witness them. This is one of the main reasons my friend Cami Coburn takes pictures of her seven children.

It’s a way for me to honor them so they have memories of themselves as kids. It’s a way to keep our family history.

3. To help kids feel important, and foster a sense of identity and self esteem.

Cami describes one benefit of keeping written memories,  photos, and videos: 

It’s so fun for me to read memories to them. I just feel like it helps them feel special and included and valued.

This was true for Vanessa Quigley. Her parents were really good about documenting her family’s life as she was growing up.

It really gave me a foundation of who I was, and what was possible for me in my life. As I’ve tried to document our family story, I’ve seen our kids hold on to the stories of our life together as a grounding point. 

Vanessa went on to make a career out of preserving family memories, when she and her husband started the company Chatbooks. You can hear more of my interview with her in episode 73: How Vanessa Tells Her Family Story and in episode 69: How She Discovers Kids’ Talents. 

4. To document the often invisible work that goes into motherhood.

As a mom, I want some credit for all of the energy and work I expend! I write and record really simple things, but if I didn’t, life would just go on and it would never be remembered.

5. To bond as a family and cultivate your family culture. 

Vanessa felt like this was true, but she wanted some data to back it up. Chatbooks partnered with HP in researching how printed photos helped strengthen families.

98% of the people in the study said that when they look at printed photos together as a family, they share more of their feelings and experiences, and they tell stories. This elaborative reminiscing reduced anxiety, increased problem solving and the ability to use language, lessened instances of depression, and promoted self esteem. Successes and failures turn into learning opportunities when stories are retold. The stories would be forgotten if not for the pictures that hold those memories.

The main point here is that yes, managing photos can be overwhelming, but most of us do it anyway, to some extent, because it’s important!

So now that we’ve talked about why we take photos, let’s talk about what to take photos of.

Taking the photos

Most families pull out the camera for special occasions like holidays, birthdays, and vacations, and many get periodic professional photos taken as well, but among the moms I interviewed it was unanimous. Their favorite photos are of everyday moments. Photos that capture a specific season of life or that really show the personality of their kids.

I like the smaller moments in life. It doesn’t have to be a big milestone, because they all end up looking the same–family around a birthday cake, or in a certain dress or whatever. So I like capturing the more intimate moments with my own kids.

To hear more from Lubna, you can listen to Episode 58: How Lubna Teaches Her Kids About Their Family History. And you can see her beautiful photography at Lubnajamalphotography.com.

Here’s a great idea of how to remember to do this, from Miss Freddy:

 I did a project when my kids were little that I called “A day in the life.” I would force myself to get out my DSLR and take pictures of all the tiny little moments that I normally wouldn’t photograph. Those are some of the pictures I have framed up in my kids rooms. They’re beautiful pictures because I forced myself to look at the day differently. 

I love what Vanessa has to add.

The photos that I love the most are the random shots taken in our home of us lying around watching TV, or of my mom cooking in the kitchen, or the inside of our 15 passenger van with all the car seats. I knew I wanted to be documenting those everyday moments of our family’s life. We often document from our point of view rather than documenting their favorite meal, how they decorated their bedrooms, their favorite outfit, and their best friends. Those are the things they are going to want to remember.

And the everyday pictures we take don’t always have to be pretty. Here’s my sister Cassie again.

 I try to be careful not to just take pictures of my kids at their very best. Mostly I try to find humor in the daily messes. But, I’ve also documented serious things like pregnancy loss, something I think is important to remember as our family. I’ll often share when my kids have made huge messes. When one of my kids says something funny, I like to hurry and snap a picture of that moment. The caption will go under the photo in the Chatbook, so I can relive the situation.

Who takes the pictures?

Another decision to make is who in the family is in charge of taking photos. It can be more than one person, but it’s a good thing to figure out.

In my family, my husband kind of became the official photographer because he always had the newest phone with the best camera. He’s also much more artistic than I am, and so takes more beautiful pictures than me. The problem is that he’s not in many of our pictures, although he’s good at remembering to take a selfie once in a while. He also works long hours, so he’s not around for a lot of the daily moments. So I clearly need to step it up a little, but overall, it’s good to have a specialist. If you don’t have such an arrangement, it might be good to communicate before vacations or events to decide who is going to be taking pictures, or you might not end up with any.

Of course, the photographer doesn’t even have to be part of your family. Lots of families outsource family photos, and Miss Freddy had a client who hired a photographer to follow them around for a day and document their real life.

Narrowing Down Your Photos

The next challenge we’re going to talk about is how to narrow down your photos so you don’t have so many—a new problem for our digital age. Lubna starts the process by being selective about the photos she takes in the first place.

I’ve become more mindful of what pictures I take right now, rather than just clicking randomly. I ask myself if this shot will preserve this moment. Because of this, I can make a connection with the pictures I take because I know something has moved me enough to pick up my camera and take a shot.

Miss Freddy narrows down her photos by a nightly habit.

 I review my camera roll daily to make decisions about what I can delete. If I’ve taken huge amounts of photos, I find the best of a series. When I do that daily, it doesn’t feel like so much work; the junk doesn’t accumulate as much.

If that seems like too often for you, here’s Vanessa’s habit:

 I’ve created a regular weekly habit to go back through the photos that I’ve taken and get rid of the stuff that I don’t want. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking 10 snaps of the one photo that you hope to get because sometimes it takes 10 to get the one that you actually want to keep. I have something that I call the Sunday select. Sundays are a time of reflection for me. Part of my looking back on the week and then preparing for the week ahead is to delete all of the junk. Sometimes I get rid of 50 photos, sometimes it’s literally 300 photos. I favorite the ones that I know I want to include in a Christmas card collage, in my Chatbooks, or on my photo gallery wall. At the end of the month, I pick the 30 that represent that past month and they go in my Chatbooks, and my month book. I also have folders for each of the kids. I will also grab the ones that they’re in and put them in their folder because at the end of the year, I make them a yearbook.

Cami also goes through her photos almost daily, like Miss Freddy, but has a bit of a different system, using her private blog. Any free moment she has, she posts her photos to her private blog. She writes a title so she can go back and fill in details later.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of how Cami records her family’s story, but we’ll save the rest for the next episode.

With five kids 11 and under, Cassie doesn’t take the time to clean up her camera roll. But she has figured out a habit that works for her. Her favorite pictures go straight to Instagram before she forgets why she took the picture in the first place. Then the posts are automatically put into her Chatbooks for her family to enjoy later.

Before I started researching for this episode, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could outsource organizing my photos. Miss Freddy and her team can actually access your computer, sort through and organize your photos, help you back them up, and even create photo books for you. 

Older kids are a great resource for this too. It can be a fun process for them to go through the pictures.

Once when my two oldest boys were fighting I started them on a project to make a photo book together of all the good times they’ve shared.

After you’ve organized your camera roll, it’s time to figure out everything else, or, as Miss Freddy says,

 You’ll pick where you want your photo life to be. Having all your pictures in one place, whether that’s Apple, or Google or Amazon, is the key so that you can fully utilize all of the benefits of the technology there. But then make sure you have backups that are outside of that system in case something goes wrong. I tell people to back things up once a year so it doesn’t get too far out of date.

This is the final and most important thing we’re going to talk about: Backing up our photos. We all have stories of the photos we’ve lost. Mine happens to be my wedding photos. You see, back in the olden days, pictures were recorded on these little rolls of film. To the best of our knowledge, our photographer reloaded his camera on the lawn of the temple where we got married, and must have left the two (or more) rolls of film he’d already finished there on the lawn. He snapped a few more awkward shots with that new roll—one of us just sitting on the lawn and a weird shot of our hands, before taking some pictures at a reception we kind of threw together in a church gym. We didn’t hire a photographer for the nice outdoor receptions in each of our home towns, because well, we thought we’d already have so many photos. 

I can laugh about it now, but it took me a while to stop getting teary-eyed when we looked at our friends’ gorgeous wedding photos.

The moral of the story is, back up those photos! We don’t physically lose film these days, but people lose digital photos all the time.

Case in point, I recently went to look for newborn pictures of my daughter, and they were nowhere to be found. Luckily, my dad is the one who took them, and his photos are so organized that he was able to send them right away.

If organizing and backing up your photos seems like a giant undertaking, especially if you also have a box or two of hard copy photos and video tapes hanging around. Miss Freddy, of course, has great advice:

I always instruct people to start with digital because that’s really what’s contributing to your overwhelm. We start there and get everything into one place. Then I usually recommend organizing it in folders by year and month just to give it some simple structure. Then I set up a backup system so everything is being saved, duplicated somewhere else in the cloud so that if anything happens to that drive or that computer, you don’t have to panic.Once your digital files are in order, it becomes much easier to tackle the scanning and the digitization process.

I’m hoping that this episode makes you less overwhelmed, by helping you identify the next baby step that will help you get your photo life in order. Don’t let it overwhelm you, take a course from Miss Freddy if you need a boost, or even hire her to organize them for you! If nothing else, keep taking those photos. And check out episode 78: How She Uses Photos and Videos to Tell Her Family’s Story.